


sandstorm

by the merienes tranch (lilhalphys)



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Experimental Style, F/F, First Kiss, i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 03:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13650060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilhalphys/pseuds/the%20merienes%20tranch
Summary: Hurley and Sloane live in Goldcliffe.Their entire lives, from birth, to meet, to kiss, to that part that happens at the end, take place there.





	sandstorm

**Author's Note:**

> the adventure zone inspired a lot of emotions in me when i listened to it. sadness didn't come up often, strangely. the end of this arc is the only time i really, truly cried my fucking eyes out.

Sloane has lived in Goldcliffe all her life.

She could run the alleyways blindfolded and knows half the houses like she grew up there, however rarely she’s a welcome presence. 

But the buildings aren’t tall enough here for her to fly. She finds herself dancing a waltz across rooftops in parts of the city where, if she fell, the “property damage” she’d leave oozing out of her would amount to more than a funeral ever could. It’s a win-win, in her mind; either she lives to soar another day or dies to upset and enrage the filthy rich. 

The wind is thick with dust like fingers carding through her hair. She chopped some of it off recently, leaving her with a bob that ends about halfway down her neck. Towering above the city center, wind whipping her locks in her eyes, she feels like a dandelion seed.

Sloane has lived in Goldcliffe all her life, but she didn’t dabble in petty thievery until her teenage years. 

Pickpocketing was never her style; she was simultaneously above such work and also, just, fucking incompetent at it. No, she’d go bigger. Museum exhibits it’d take just long enough for the gawking masses to miss for her to pawn them or wagon parts too expensive for anyone who does any racing to afford them.

Sloane has lived in Goldcliffe all her life, and the Venn diagram between good cops and good people is two circles with more distance between them than her and the goddamned moon.

Sloane is glad that Hurley is a really shitty cop.

Okay, back up.

Hurley can’t remember ever living anywhere but Goldcliffe. 

She’s always been small, and Goldcliffe has always been big. Perhaps it was destiny or logically inevitable, but Hurley loves to go fast. It’s more natural than the jutting cliff edge that marks the city’s end, more innate than the base instinct that keeps her breathing when she’s asleep.

Hurley can’t remember living anywhere but Goldcliffe, so she’s more than familiar with all its problems.

She doesn’t want to be a cop in this city for the rich, she wants to build ever faster bikes and wagons. More than that, though, she wants to help people. She wants to do some good for this place with its warm families and hollow towers. She is chosen for her technical mind and for her “stealth capabilities”, and she is a member of the Goldcliffe Militia. 

Hurley can’t remember living anywhere but Goldcliffe, and she’s most glad for it at night. 

An hour ago, the sun set over the city, its golden light molding a gorgeous skyline from Hurley’s perch atop one of the taller buildings in the area. This is the most comfortable Hurley has felt in so long, the coolness of the night air being amplified by the strong winds at this altitude. She sighs.

And all that comfort melts away when Hurley hears someone land on the rooftop behind her. The Raven, right on time.

Sloane meets The Cop there, on that rooftop.

The Cop says, “You’re the Raven.”

And Sloane responds, “That’s correct.”

And Sloane has done this before. She’s not a kid anymore, she knows how it goes. The Cop will try to arrest her, and Sloane, ever the master criminal, will run away and escape. And they will do this for a few weeks until The Cop gets tired of it, maybe a few months if she’s dedicated, and then someone else from the militia will take up her case. Repeat ad nauseum.

So when The Cop says, “Is it true that you participate in the illegal battlewagon races?”,

Sloane plays along and responds, again, “That’s correct.”  
Hurley meets The Raven then, on that night.

She’s supposed to be apprehending her, a feat no one else in the militia has accomplished, but her curiosity gets the better of her.

So Hurley says, “I’d like to be your partner.”

This time, The Raven does not respond. Her whole body goes rigid, and Hurley can see her eyes widen under her mask.

It’s off-putting, to say the least, so Hurley says, “I, I know my way around building a wagon. I’d say I’m pretty damn good at it.”

And then The Raven gets ahold of herself, and she says, “Yeah, okay, not really what I was expecting, but sure? I guess?”

 

~

Sloane and Hurley race together in Goldcliffe for a while, Hurley the Ram to Sloane’s Raven. She keeps her hair much shorter than Sloane ever did, so she’s less cotton seed and more wished-on dandelion as they speed down the track. 

Hurley hadn’t been lying when she’d said she was good at building battle wagons, but they still suck at racing when they start. There’s an art to it, to conquering the track, Sloane had said, and Hurley had scoffed at her. But they’d already been left to the dust a dozen times now, and there was something unspoken between them, a fear that Hurley’s luck in keeping their secret was running out. 

Or Sloane thinks so at least, sitting in on a shelf she’s already broken five or so times in their too-small garage.

Hurley’s small voice comes from under the wagon she’s currently trying to perfect. “Pass me that spanner?”

Sloane does, grateful that she’s able to contribute something to this part despite it being, let’s say, one of her weaker areas. She’s always been better at driving than building.

As her fingers gently brush Hurley’s and the spanner switches hands, Sloane sighs. “Aren’t you afraid, Hurls?”

“Thanks, and no. I’m not.”

“I mean-”

“I know, Sloane. I’m not afraid of getting caught.”

“It’s a real risk.”

Sloane can see the way Hurley’s legs, the only part of her sticking out from under the truck, tense for a moment, and she winces. “I know, Sloane! I just. I don’t care. If I get caught, I’ll run away with you.”

“What?”

“I mean,” she slides out from under the wagon on her wheeled platform and sits up on it, fantasy oil staining her face, “if you’ll have me?”

“Of course, Hurls.” Sloane wants to ask why she’d ever do such a thing, with her job and her reputation, but it’s probably too personal. It’s hard to think like that when Hurley is so cute, gently shifting her little platform by pressing her toe against the floor, and then her heel, and then her toe again, and then

And then Sloane smiles. And so does Hurley.

~

 

Hurley can feel it in her bones. This race is the most important one she’s ever been in. She doesn’t have the slightest goddamned clue why; there’s no great stakes - at least none greater than usual - and she has no reason to think the militia has caught her. 

But there’s something about today.

She can feel it in the speed of the wagons around her, feel it in the wicked grin splitting Sloane’s face. Some force beyond her imagination is pulling them all towards the finish line.

It’s the two of them and two others, and they’re easy to outpace in a wagon Hurley specifically designed for speed at the end of a race. She touches the safety harness on her chest, reassures herself that it’ll hold, and throws all her energy into the magical engine powering the wagon.

She wakes up a few minutes later, high on victory before she can even confirm that they’ve won. They have. Of course they have, they’re the best. Sloane is holding her in one arm against her chest, and Hurley likes it there very, very much. Sloane is laughing with her entire  body and it beats from her heart into Hurley’s, who starts laughing too. 

And just before Hurley’s feet hit the ground, Sloane dips and kisses her. And gods, maybe it should be more unexpected but it feels so  _ right  _ to Hurley. She wraps one arm around Sloane’s neck, pulling desperately at her hair, and uses the other to ensure that her mask stays on. Sloane, too, is only using one arm to hold her partner, with the other holding their prize high above them.

It’s a belt, woven with delicate, experienced hands from vines, twigs, and flowers.

 

~

“This isn’t you, Sloane, please-”

“You really think that? Did you really know me?”

“I guess I didn’t! Fine, whatever! Do what you want, if you’re gonna be this way! I don’t need-”

“Hurley, wait-”

“No, I’m done-”

“Hurley, please, I’m  _ scared _ .”

~

 

Sloane has lived in Goldcliffe all her life. 

She doesn’t anymore, not really.

She no longer jumps from rooftop to rooftop; why bother, if there’s no sense of danger? Why bother stealing or being sneaky about if she has the power to get whatever the hell she wants? Why bother racing, if-

Sloane lives somewhere between Goldcliffe and the Astral Plane, somewhere a few blocks beyond her physical body, like the desert past city limits suddenly thickened with forest. There is no more wind, and she is a whole field of flowers, so much more than a pitiful seed. But the ram doesn’t graze there anymore, and the ravens have migrated south for the winter.

Hurley can’t remember living anywhere but Goldcliffe.

She can’t remember living there anymore either, now.

Hurley lives somewhere beneath Goldcliffe, beneath herself like there’s nothing, there’s no one keeping her up in the sky anymore. The water of the city’s rives rushes past her ears and fills her lungs, sending her flying backwards, choking on something

Sloane and Hurley die in Goldcliffe. 

Alright, back up a bit, yeah?

Sloane is just as far away from Goldcliffe as she’s been for the past few weeks when she’s atop the Trust, unsatisfied with how easy it was to get there. She’s digging her fingernails into tree bark made of iron as she quite nearly murders three people. She’s not - this isn’t her -  _ she’s not a killer. _

She skids sidelong back into herself for just a moment, in that last race. The desert whips up around her longboat, the grains of it getting caught in her clothes, in that fucking belt, and she’s a cotton seed again, even if her hair is longer than before, because she’s beside

Hurley’s hands scrabble against the edge of the cliff, her whole body sore from climbing out of the endless abyss for as long as she has. She didn’t realize how hard she’d fallen into Sloane’s arms until she wasn’t there anymore and, suddenly, Hurley had nothing keeping her afloat. 

As three other people get into the battlewagon that should have belonged to her and Sloane only, Hurley decides that she was wrong before. This is, by far, the most important race she’s ever been in. Her life, her love, her everything riding on every twitch of her finger and on far too many people executing everything perfectly for her to be comfortable.

But they do.

Everything falls into place, and it was Hurley who fucked up in the end. Hurley, who couldn’t help Sloane, who couldn’t think for one damn second and realize that her plan  _ wouldn’t  _ help Sloane.

Hurley, who loved Sloane and got the two of them into this mess. 

 

~

“You’re scared?”

“Gods, Hurls, I’m terrified. This belt, it’s the most powerful thing in the world. And, and I knew, and I thought that would so good for me, for both of us. But. It’s all gone wrong. I’m, I’m not me anymore. This, belt it-”

“Oh, Sloane. Come here, I’ve-”

“No, Hurls, get away -  _ stay the hell away from me! _ ”

~

 

Sloane sits alone in her forest of decay, and she is sinking, steel cable vines pulling her under, choking her, consuming her in the thrall-

And then, with an impossible force, light.

The warmest light Sloane has ever felt in her life corrodes through the malice holding her down, eating away at the whole world until she’s floating in a sea of it. It pulls her close, embraces her.

It kisses her.

She wakes up in the center of the city, Hurley lying in the water in her arms, and, gods, she could almost pretend this is a normal outing for them, save the broad daylight, the belt tied around Sloane’s waist, and the inky blackness filling Hurley’s veins.

Sloane sits up, careful to keep Hurley close to her chest. 

The imbeciles she brought with her - the people Sloane nearly killed a day or two ago - might walk over. They might not. It doesn’t really matter to Sloane; her world is narrowed to the woman dying right before her very eyes.

And Hurley says, “You’re in trouble.”

And Sloane says, “Wanna just sit around like this for, like, forever?”

And Hurley says, “Yeah, I think that’d be alright.”

And Hurley is cold. She can feel each and every one of her individual veins shriveling up, and she is cold. But Sloane is warm, Sloane is beautiful and warm. Hurley sighs one last time as Sloane pulls them impossibly closer together and presses her lips gently against Hurley’s temple.

And Sloane and Hurley die in Goldcliffe, where they have always lived.

**Author's Note:**

> i feel like a lot of hurloane fic is a bit. this-adjacent. and i like that. i have some other taz fic in the works that's literally just some "what if this shit happened really differently" scenarios. keep an eye out! if you enjoyed this fic, please kudos! comment if you can!


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